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But few GOP party activists are willing to say it should be abolished and think a final decision on the poll’s fate won’t be made until 2014.

“I think the sentiment right now [toward the straw poll] is pretty mixed across the board,” said Steve Scheffler, the Republican National Committeeman for Iowa and a member of the Iowa GOP State Central Committee. “You couldn’t say there’s a consensus behind anything right now. … I’d like to save it if we could but we need to be realistic.”

The poll, first held in 1979, is part of a big conservative confab in the Iowa city of Ames held in August the year prior to each presidential election without a Republican incumbent. Candidates buy space at the event and provide food and entertainment for supporters that are often bused into the event by the candidates’ campaigns.

The poll has functioned as a first gauge of a Republican’s organizing skill and in some of the past few cycles, the winner has been an evangelical conservative that didn’t go on to win the GOP nomination. The results have been mixed since its inception: George W. Bush won the straw poll in 1999 and nabbed the nomination, and Bob Dole tied for first place in 1995. But in other years, it was won by candidates who quickly flamed out.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad sparked a kerfuffle over the poll’s future late last month when he said it has “outlived its usefulness.”

His concerns are ones that were raised earlier in the 2012 cycle, when Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won the 2011 straw poll but came in sixth in the Iowa caucuses in January. The GOP nominees in 2008 and 2012, John McCain and Mitt Romney, avoided investing heavily in the straw poll but still won the GOP nomination.

Still, it’s true that Mike Huckabee, who came in a surprising second place in the 2007 straw poll behind Mitt Romney, went on to win the Iowa caucuses that year.

“This cycle, Michele Bachmann won the straw poll but didn’t do well in the caucuses,” said Chip Saltsman, who served as Huckabee’s 2008 campaign manager. “That’s not what happened four years ago; … for us, it was an incredibly useful tool.”

Proponents of the straw poll see it as a way for Iowans to get close access to the candidates as well as for candidates to test their ground operation and grass-roots support in advance of the caucuses. Opponents, though, say it’s an overly expensive, unscientific event that drains a candidate’s funds and requires a big investment to even get on the board, let alone win.

“I think the thing that’s most offensive is the pay-to-play nature,” said Brian Hughes, a Florida-based GOP consultant and the former spokesman for the Florida Republican Party. “You can’t make an honest assessment of a candidate and their operation when all it really takes to succeed there is spreading money to this core group of Iowa activists.”

Readers' Comments (2)

The Iowa caucus, as well as the South Carolina primary, have become, on the GOP side, taken over by the evangelicals in recent years. You will see, as the GOP moves back toward the middle, less and less importance paid to these contests.